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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Homeschool or Not...? Goals for "Schooling"

This is just a few current thoughts on whether or not we should homeschool once Basbusa gets old enough for school, insha'Allah. I hope I'll be able to look back on all these posts and keep track of how my own thinking is evolving.

For now, the list below is what I've come up with for what I want my kids to get out of their education, regardless of what kind of school they get it in (once I'm happy with the list, I'll then try to figure out what kind of school or "unschool" could best manage to teach it). These are the bare minimums I want to make sure to cover - I mean, any system that couldn't manage all this, at least, would be one I'd be pretty dubious about. Of course, I hope that the girls will learn lots of other things too; I'm just trying to sort out what my list of basic essentials should look like.

Main overall goals:

- love of discovery

- confidence in own judgement and abilities

- grow up to be good people, with thorough knowledge of Islam

Goals for social skills:

- ease, comfort and pleasure in interacting with peers, older people, and younger people

Chinese because I think it's going to be by far the most important language to know by the time our kids are grown up, whether they end up more interested in business or politics. And since they already have Arabic, I thought it might give them some unusual opportunities to have Chinese as well, insha'Allah? There can't be all that many people who speak both languages, and given China's need for oil and the Middle East's eagerness to sell it, it will surely be a useful skill insha'Allah. wAllahu 3alim :)

By multicultural experience, I mean having friends and teachers from all kinds of backgrounds, and to have lived in more than one country themselves. I want them to have multicultural experience partly because it's such an important skill to be able to understand other people in today's diverse world; partly because I've found that you can only really understand *yourself* if you have exposure to a range of other perspectives; and partly just because it's so interesting and rewarding to see other ways of doing things.